Define the Work Before You Scale the Worker

McKinsey says 40 percent of large organizations are now scaling AI agents.

That number will get passed around as proof that agents have arrived. Fine. They have.

But adoption is not competence.

The useful question is not whether your competitors are using agents. They are, or they will be soon enough. The useful question is whether anyone inside the business has defined the work clearly enough for an agent to do it without turning the workflow into fog at higher speed.

Most teams still want to start with the platform decision.

Wrong order.

Start with the job.

What work repeats? Who owns it? What can the agent read? What can it change? What must stop for review? What does a good output look like? What business result is supposed to move?

If those answers are missing, scaling just spreads ambiguity through more tools, more teams, and more budget lines.

That is not an agent strategy. That is software procurement with better verbs.

Forty percent proves the category moved into operating plans. It does not prove the work got managed.

Define the workflow before you scale the worker.